We were lucky to catch up with Emiland Kray recently and have shared our conversation below.

Emiland, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I have always been interested in the arts, and my grandparents will brag that they have some of my first drawings of horses framed! It wasn’t until I began taking art seriously in college that I began developing the skills that I cherish today.

My first introduction into the book arts field was during my undergraduate program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Within the book arts lab was also a fine press studio called Black Rock Press. This was incredibly important, because as I was just a beginner at the time, I was also exposed to working professionals in the field. This environment helped me visualize and actualize skill-based goals for myself that I knew were valued within the book arts field. Moving forward, much of the skills in the book arts and fine press world are acquired through skill sharing. By developing new connections with other artists I was also given opportunities to develop new skills alongside these relationships.

Learning to make games and toys on the other hand, developed naturally for me, much without my intentional effort! Growing up, I was incredibly interested in board games, trivia, puzzles, toys, and video games, and suddenly my artwork began taking on some of the same qualities found in my beloved toys and games. In 2020, for my BFA Thesis exhibit Nurture, I made work using the language of toys and games to talk about the importance of chance versus choice within the context of childhood development. This exhibit forced me to learn woodworking to design the puzzles and toys needed for the show. The loving nostalgia I felt for these objects was my teacher: I knew how the puzzles should sound, I knew the familiar weight they would have in my hands, I just had to bring them from my memories into the present.

The key to learning both book binding and game design is patience and repetition. There need not be a shortcut when the joy of making lies within the process. Each project that I propose purposefully puts obstacles in my way so that I must learn to overcome them. In order to have range and discipline within my practice I tend to look for skills that I am not familiar with, and it’s through this uncomfortable process that I grow as an artist and maker.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Emiland Kray and I am a visual artist working primarily with book arts and game design to investigate the complexities and fallacies of memory by manipulating our attachment to nostalgic and familiar forms. I began my artistic career by living and working in Las Vegas, Nevada and received my BFA from the University of Nevada, Reno in 2020. That same year, I began my MFA at the University of Arizona, Tucson. I hungrily have participated in group shows nationally since 2016 and have had solo shows across Nevada and in Arizona. Since then, I continue to make art with a focus on community involvement and volunteer work and have graduated with my MFA in the Spring of 2023.

My work is in numerous permanent library collections nationwide and is also in the homes of many collectors. I aim to make my artwork highly accessible and oftentimes my works will take the form of books made in large editions and free-to-play browser games.

My artwork poses questions about the mechanics of how we remember – the complexity that exists within those entangled systems of perception and reality. I visually introduce instances of slippage in our recollection of the past and the decay of memory towards nostalgia. Through my work, I gather and sift through intangible archives: dreams, nightmares, and memories themselves to find how these essences make statements about the importance of memory but also the futility and temperance of life.

I use the systems of remembering hidden within the body to make statements about identity, fear, and desire but also to search for the morphology of nostalgia. With a combination of watercolor, ink, game design, and book arts I create tension between the factual and the remembered. This combination disrupts the recognizability of the archive and thus also disrupts the stability and the seductive nostalgic essence of the past. These techniques pose the past as questionable, memory as simulation, and evidence as incomplete. My work seeks to make visible our growing pains and to reject comfort in the notion of a perfect genesis.

The subjects represented in this body of work appear from the black of the abyss. Dense, inky mist distorts and emphasizes their form. They are revealed and hidden simultaneously, and also pose more questions than they provide answers for. The works provide no closure, but instead snapshots of an imaginary realm that we each visit, but rarely remember. Each work is a morphing riddle, or a liquid puzzle.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

In short: society needs to offer more paid collaborative efforts that combine the arts with other disciplinary fields. Every field from medicine to astronomy benefits from learning how to effectively communicate visually, and artists can be a means to make their research more accessible to a wider audience. Our world is constantly enriched by the arts and yet it is one of the least funded fields of research. And I’m not talking about the Art that is coveted and hidden away in museums. I’m speaking about the artwork that grows and maintains communities, the community gardens adorned with murals, the libraries filled with books and youth art exhibits, the photographs of our changing cultural identities, the music heard near the train tracks, the artwork that speaks more to our humanity than it does to a capitalist agenda. If we could imagine these art forms combined with biology, mathematics, physics, neuroscience, psychology, nutrition, and more then our world would drastically transform.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the bad habits that I learned while growing up is how to be a good people pleaser. Up until recently, many of my personal opinions, my identity, and my artmaking style and rigor were based on what I thought were valuable to others. I had a very unstable sense of self and based a lot of my self worth on impressing others. And let me be very clear, this is a struggle that was impressed upon me as a child and that I am just now, at the age of 28, dismantling. It is a constant struggle trying to find my voice, a voice that had been systematically quieted for years that stems from a fear of rejection. Speaking from my personal experience, I’ve challenged this fear by making art that’s designated for my eyes only, or by journaling and purposefully keeping my thoughts secret. Everyday I take time to take stock of what my opinions are of my day: what did I enjoy? How was I feeling and how did my feelings change? What triggered me (if at all)? What are my plans for tomorrow and how can I prepare for them? How will I show up for myself tomorrow?

Contact Info:

• Website: emilykray.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/troctopus
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TroctopusInc

Image Credits
All Photos Taken by: David Baboila